La MaMa Experimental Theatre

  • Theater
  • East Village
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Time Out says

This bastion for rising artists looking to take risks has been in business since 1961 and has since hosted pieces by Sam Shepard, Amy Sedaris, Philip Glass and other breakthrough performers. If you're looking for theater on the far fringes, you'll be satisfied by La MaMa's colorful panoply of productions.

Details

Address
66 E 4th St
New York
10003
Cross street:
between Bowery and Second Ave
Transport:
Subway: F to Second Ave; N, R to 8th St–NYU; 6 to Bleecker St
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What’s on

The Barbarians

4 out of 5 stars
Who says they don't make weird downtown shows like they used to? In The Barbarians, playwright Jerry Lieblich takes an influential analytic concept from linguistics—John L. Austin's notion of "performative" statements, in which the act of saying something also makes it happen—and explodes it into a wildly silly satire of politics and war that doubles as a metatheatrical exploration of how plays summon worlds out of language. The show's academic underpinnings are camouflaged by (and/or expressed through) an avalanche of puns, hairpin plot turns, zany DIY trappings and confident comic performances by a cast of alt-theater all-stars—Jess Barbagallo, Jennifer Ikeda, Naren Weiss, Chloe Claudel, Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Anne Gridley—as characters including two mad scientists, a track-suited goofball, a robot-voiced woman, a puppet actor come to life and a peevish, ruthless politico named Madam President Fake President. (The script incorporates several snatches of historical speeches.) The seasoned experimentalist Paul Lazar, of Big Dance Theatre—who directs the production for Lieblich's company, Third Ear Theater—keeps things moving at a rapid clip while the mellifluous Steve Mellor, as our narrator, provides a measure of stability from a desk downstage right. It's batty and unhinged and just what you want from a three-week run at La MaMa. The Barbarians | Photograph: Courtesy Bronwen Sharp
  • Experimental

The Magic of Light

Yara Arts Group's Virlana Tkacz directs a multimedia work that celebrates Ukrainian culture of the 1870s as exemplified by the epic singer Ostap Versai and the young artist Porfiry Martynovych. The songs of the former are performed live by bandura specialist Julian Kytasty; the journey of the latter, whose drawings were projected at an 1875 Versai concert, is rendered by puppeteer Tom Lee. The piece is performed in English and Ukrainian (translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps). 
  • Puppet shows
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